The veil has many hooks to deal with.
M9:Week 2: Grace in the Visible Life of the Body
Day 2: Grace in the Attractiveness of the Body
Today’s Veil to Pierce
You have been taught that the attractiveness of the body depends on polished programs, impressive teaching, or cultural relevance.
That teaching is the veil of illusion at its most strategic.
The false self turns attractiveness into a project of image management — something the community must carefully curate. It whispers that people will only be drawn if the body looks successful, unified, and problem-free. This veil creates the illusion that the steadfast love that holds the body needs help to become compelling. In our shared contemplations, this distortion echoes the early church that drew people not by polished strategy but by the unmistakable quality of their shared life.
Grace does not make the body attractive through image management.
It makes the body attractive through the visible reality of the love that holds it.
Grace’s Revelatory Power
Grace in the attractiveness of the body reveals that the eternal root of Charis — the steadfast, covenantal love of God — is itself the compelling reality. People are drawn not primarily by what the body produces but by the quality of belonging, loyalty, and shared life they encounter. Charis is this same love now becoming observable in the ordinary ways the body stays with one another, welcomes the stranger, and carries both joy and sorrow together. This power is quiet and magnetic: grace exposes the deceptive veil of “we must make ourselves attractive,” dissolving the illusion that attractiveness is something we manufacture. Through this, grace restores true witness: the false self’s image management fades, allowing the body to become attractive simply by living the love it has received.
Contemplative Depth
Take one place where the body has been tempted to manage its image rather than simply live its life.
Not to judge the effort. Just to look at it.
Feel the veil tighten — the subtle pressure to appear better than we are, the quiet fear that the real life is not enough, the assumption that attractiveness must be curated. Then let grace do what it does best: nothing dramatic. Just a gentle turn of attention.
You do not need to polish the body to make it compelling.
You only need to notice that the steadfast love anchored before time is already attractive, and Charis is making that attractiveness visible — right now, in the ordinary shared life.
Attractiveness is not manufactured.
It is an invitation to stop resisting what is already true.
Applying the Insight
When the pressure to manage the body’s image arises and the old strategy begins, pause.
Ask yourself one quiet question:
“Am I trying to make the body attractive from fear, or resting in the love already given?”
Then breathe.
The answer usually changes everything.
Daily Reflection Prompt
Choose one place where image management has been present. Sit with it for five minutes without trying to improve the appearance. Notice where the veil tightens. Then ask: What if the steadfast love is already making the body attractive here as Charis? Write what arises.
Something Extra…
Chesed and Charis – Two Sides to the Same Coin
If you’re interested in learning more about the relationship between Chesed and Charis, you can find this recent release where I explore some of the finer points.
You must be logged in to post a comment.